Help me figure out what [Game Series] to marathon next

[njiska]

One mild night last Novermber I sat down to do something I had never done before; beat the original Mega Man on NES. At the time I thought it was only going to be a one shot run, but by the time I finished I felt such a sense of accomplishment that I decided to keep going, beat the classic series and then tackled X, Zero and ZX. It took nearly six months to get through all the games, but it was the most fun I had had as a gamer in years and refreshed my memory as to why I love this hobby in the first place. Plus I had only really played MM2, MM3 and MMX before, so it was great to experience a bunch of new games. I also got to meet some great people here in the Mega Man Miscellaneous thread. After my marathon came to an end in early April I decided to take a break and just clear some games out of my queue like Chrono Trigger and the DKC series. Now that they're out of the way I'm looking to ramp up again with another marathon, but I'm not really sure what series to do. Hence why I'm looking to you guys for suggestions.

The general rules:
- No Shmups, Fighting Games, Puzzle Games (Tetris style. Myst type are ok), Sports Games or games without an ending.
- Must be a series of at least 3 games
- Story based games must be available in English either officially or through a fan hack
- I want to do this with legit games so they must be playable on a console I own or can acquire or be something like a Wii vc hack. I don't want to emulate on PC.

Systems: Atari 2600, Sega Master System, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Sega CD, Sega 32X, TG-16, 3DO, PSX, Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, X360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PSP, Gameboy, Game Gear, 3DS

Otherwise I'm open to pretty much anything. I'm also curious to know if anyone else does marathons like this.

[Edited: for the smart asses ]

[shmuppyLove]

If you wanna go the RPG route, it would take a while to get through all the Tails games

Might be fun to go through some of the action romp series on PS2, like Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper. Or maybe the Oddworld games?

[Friendly]

Castlevania?

[mesh control]

Swimming

[Friendly]

Running!

[shmuppyLove]

Castlevania?

Oh shit yeah, that's a good one.

[stryc9]

Do you like Shinobi? You could do the 3 on Genesis (Shadow Dancer, Super Shinobi 1&2).

[Ruldra]

Phantasy Star series. I haven't played II and III, but I and IV are amazing.

[CloudyMusic]

If you're into RPGs, try Suikoden. You can skip IV if you like, but the others are all great IMO.

[njiska]

For the record, I am not into RPGs, but lately I've beentrying to expand my horizons so they are definitely on the table. Had actually been considering Wild ARMs.

[Daigohji]

I'm currently doing a series playthrough of the Metal Gear games in (more or less) story continuity order. I started with Peace Walker HD since I haven't played that one before, but I'm currently at the start of the continuity with MGS3 HD. Since the version of Snake Eater included on the HD collection is Subsistence, it has the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 included as bonus features. So the order will be:

MGS3 HD
Peace Walker HD (should have gone here)
Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2
MGS: The Twin Snakes (I'm more in the mood for the remake than the PS1 version at the moment)
MGS2 HD
MGS4

[Ruldra]

I see you don't want to emulate games on the PC, so I suggest you buy the Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection (PS360). With that disk alone you can play the following series:

Phantasy Star (I, II, III, IV)
Streets of Rage (I, II, III)
Shining series (Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force I, II)
Golden Axe (I, II, III)
Sonic (I, II, III, & Knuckles)

Should keep you busy for a very long time.

[CStarFlare]

Castlevania is an easy one to recommend, but it has a loooot of games.
Doom surprised me. I love it. Haven't played 3 yet though.
Seiken Densetsu/Mana series. 3 is available as a repro or via a Wii hack.
Silent Hill, stop at 4.
Metroid, it's greaaaaat.

[Ruldra]

Doom surprised me. I love it. Haven't played 3 yet though.

Doom III BFG Edition will come out in October for PC and PS360. It includes Doom I, II and a remastered III.

[njiska]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Definitely some series I haven't thought about. My thoughts so far:

Possible options:
Wild ARMs - My own curious maybe/maybe not
Suikoden - Never played it
Phantasy Star - I own Sonic Ultimate so this would be easy
Silent Hill - Huge fan, but only finished SH2. Love horror games
Odd World - Already own all four games, but never really played them. Could be an interesting look into Lorne Lanning.

Not an option:
Metal Gear - I've already played every game in the series aside from Peace Walker. This includes the MSX games. Good luck Daigohji!
Doom - Again, played them all. Haven't finished 3, but i may go back to it when Ultimate BFG is released.
Metroid - I've played a good deal of Super Metroid and Zero mission. Been casually working on Fusion. Not a series i'm interested in doing a straight run through.
Castlevania - I don't want to have to deal with the Axe Knight/Medusa corridor. That's as far as I've gotten in the first game and I don't have the patience to deal with it again. I'm also played the best parts of the rest of the series already.
Sonic - I've given this one real thought and was nearly going to do it, but then I played a little Sonic Adventure 2 and got mad at the Knuckles stages.
Streets of Rage - Again, played them all. Love them.
Jak and Daxter - Already played them all.

[cj iwakura]

I've been meaning to do a Resident Evil marathon. Most of the games can be finished in under 10 hours, which is bonus.

(1, 2, 3, CV, 4, 5)

Er, you could include 0, but why bother.

[njiska]

Er, you could include 0, but why bother.

Because it's Becky' Big Adventure!

[lrdr]

I wouldn't play Phantasy Star unless you emulate them. The pace of the earlier games, esp. II, is interminable, so a speed up option is essential for pleasant play. If the Sonic Ultimate reissue has that option then go for it, but bear in mind these are very pure old-school RPGs which are more like (early) Ultima than the 16 bit Final Fantasies (except for IV, which does head in that direction), so if you're not into the genre already you might find it a slog.

On that note, play Wizardry.

[cj iwakura]

I like Rebecca, but not that much. I'd rather just play as her in Mercenaries.
(I've yet to finish 0, only one I haven't.)

[mesh control]

Er, you could include 0, but why bother.

Because it's Becky' Big Adventure!

Play SH, so that I can live vicariously through your gaming.

[EmperorIng]

Hell, Resident Evil 1 can be beaten in like, under two hours if you know what you're doing.

The early RE games are almost built with the speed-run game option open to you - they are actually really fast-paced games once you know what to do.

Plus, the original trilogy is some of the best gaming to be had on the PS1. Re4 speaks for itself, and you can honestly skip RE5.

I'd like to get RE0. The REmake for the GC is also excellent and really creepy. As is Code Veronica.

[cuttingagent]

Assault Suits Valken/Lynos/Cybernator.

I'm not sure why you'd wanna emulate on the Wii VC over PC. I mean, the emulation is actually BETTER illegally. If you don't believe me, go spend 8 bucks on Super Mario Bros NES on VC. See that big ugly vertical strip of empty blue on the left side of the screen? Yeah, fuck your life, kill your gods. Pretty much all the consoles have dodgy emulation of downloadable games. It's because they don't give a shit. It's easy money, they just throw some old game on and pay for a license if it's not their IP and the nostalgia bucks roll in, they don't care if the emulation is accurate as long as it runs well enough to not necessarily be called broken. And 8 bucks for an NES game, especially one like SMB? That's four times what you wouldve payed for the cart in a bargain bin at a pawn shop 16 years ago. Illegal emulators are the best because some guy was a perfectionist to the point he spent 10 years trying to get it 100% accurate. Nintendo doesn't care about its old games, they only sell them on VC because they saw a viable market in emulation after trying to sue the people who started it. Hackers may not give a shit about Nintendo's bottom line but at least they love the GAMES.

[EmperorIng]

Honestly, playing the Target Earth/Assault Suit games without a controller is the real killer.

Emulated or not, playing them with just a keyboard is a BITCH. Especially Assault Suits Valken. Most SNES games are ok for a keyboard, but when you throw in the constant use of all six letter buttons, it gets to be a pain.

I was lucky to pick up a copy of Cybernator and Target Earth from a used game shop at separate times last year. So I got the best of all possible solutions. Good thing, though. They are kick-ass games. Hard as hell. I never got past the fourth stage in Target Earth, and Valken's 3 continues are a real ball-buster in those longer gauntlet levels.

[louisg]

Marathon the Marathon series

Seriously though, I played through Doom eps. 1-3 recently, and it's still a lot of fun.

I'm not sure why you'd wanna emulate on the Wii VC over PC. I mean, the emulation is actually BETTER illegally. If you don't believe me, go spend 8 bucks on Super Mario Bros NES on VC. See that big ugly vertical strip of empty blue on the left side of the screen? Yeah, fuck your life, kill your gods. Pretty much all the consoles have dodgy emulation of downloadable games.

Out of the ones I've tried, the Genesis and Neo Geo emulation on Wii was amazing, down to using an actual progressive-scan mode and no jitter (Genesis: Gleylancer, Neo Geo: Metal Slug 1). The N64 emulation in F-Zero X, however, was rather bad. But S&P1 worked out O.K. somehow.

[cuttingagent]

Why does everyone think PC emulation entails not using a controller??? I have 2 USB controllers. I would never play a console game without one.

[cuttingagent]

Out of the ones I've tried, the Genesis and Neo Geo emulation on Wii was amazing, down to using an actual progressive-scan mode and no jitter (Genesis: Gleylancer, Neo Geo: Metal Slug 1). The N64 emulation in F-Zero X, however, was rather bad. But S&P1 worked out O.K. somehow.

And unfortunately there's not really a way to tell which games you should shell on and which ones will waste your money. Except that, by what has been said in this thread, Nintendo is worst at emulating it's OWN consoles. That's silly.

[njiska]

Assault Suits Valken/Lynos/Cybernator.

I'm not sure why you'd wanna emulate on the Wii VC over PC.

Three reasons:

- I have several large Trinitrons
- I like to sit on my couch
- WiiVC emulation is incredibly accurate, at least for everything I've played on it so far.

It's not that i can't do it on PC, just that I'd really prefer not to. As I'm a collector I'd also like to play on the original system if i can.

[burgerkingdiamond]

The 3 Ninja Gaidens for NES. DO IT!

I've managed to beat them all, so I can say it's definitely doable. And if you've beat all the original Mega Man games I know you're up to it.

NG-I is a cakewalk.

NG-II is more difficult due to some annoying environmental hazard levels like ice and wind. But there are some better powerups which make things easier.

NG-III is the hardest of them all, but IMO that's just because it limits you to 5 continues, whereas the first 2 games were unlimited.

[Ghegs]

NG-I is a cakewalk.

Whatcha' talking ab---oh.

...because it limits you to 5 continues, whereas the first 2 games were unlimited.

I would've guessed most of us here play these games like we play shmups. I wouldn't consider any game I used continues on as beaten, be it R-Type or Ninja Gaiden or Mario. I was actually under the impression njiska's marathons were done with this philosophy, but now I'm not sure if it ever came up.

Props on doing a marathon regardless. When I first got the Mega Man X Collection I tried going through all the games, but by the end of X3 I was already bored and wanted something else to play. Variety is the spice of gaming and all that.

[burgerkingdiamond]

NG-I is a cakewalk.

Whatcha' talking ab---oh.

...because it limits you to 5 continues, whereas the first 2 games were unlimited.

I would've guessed most of us here play these games like we play shmups. I wouldn't consider any game I used continues on as beaten, be it R-Type or Ninja Gaiden or Mario. I was actually under the impression njiska's marathons were done with this philosophy, but now I'm not sure if it ever came up.

Props on doing a marathon regardless. When I first got the Mega Man X Collection I tried going through all the games, but by the end of X3 I was already bored and wanted something else to play. Variety is the spice of gaming and all that.

I don't have that same mentality when I play platformers. Of course it's a nice aspiration but it's not really the same situation.

In shmups (those without checkpoints) you can always get to the end by unlimited continues through credit feeding. But in Ninja Gaiden if you get a game over you're starting at the beginning of the level, and no matter how many times you continue you're not going anywhere unless you get good enough to get through the level on your own. You can't brute force it.

In the case of NG-1 I can actually come pretty close to a 1-CC. I can no miss until 6-2 on almost any given run unless my mind wanders off somewhere. The real roadblock for me is fighting the 3 bosses in a row. If you die during any one of the 3 final bosses you go back to 6-1. If this happens I usually turn off the game out of disgust... 8 times out of 10 I'll beat the game on the second credit though.

I have no missed Contra once. That was such a great feeling. I've tried to do it again, but the faux 3-D levels always ruin the pace of the game for me. They bore me to death.